[mburbank]

Points 1-3 don't realte at all to the Presidents statement.

Point 4 is utterly circumstantial. One of our principle exports is computer tech. Does that mean Sadam got his computer chips from us?

Point 5 is sophistry and just the sort of word parsing this administration promised not to resort to. It's nice it says it, but what are the facts that back it up? Are they more or less reliable than the forged Nigerian Documents?

Point 6 'a foreign government'... hard to check that one out, but a good guess would be England. You know, the guys who 'learned' about this transaction, and are sticking by it, based on other evidence that they won't share even with their allies? Why, exactly, especially now that the Sadams government has fallen?

Point 7: as long as we are parsing, 'reports indicate' is not that same as 'confirming'. Have thesee reports been submitted to rigorous background checks to see if they aren't.... you know... really bad forgeries?

point 8: Really? Can you ellaborate on that? Since the CIA seemed more than willing to allow corrupted information into the state of the union speech, which agencies are we talking about, and how is this 'consensus' vetted? And prior to vetting how many tikmes does Dick Chenney get to visit?

Point 9: No way, seriously? An unamed businessman? An unamed official? That's pretty damning evidence. It makes me think of the unamed iraqi scientist pointing to a burried cache of weapons of mass destruction. I'd want to know something about where this intel came from and if the BBC has yet investigated the claim or is merely reporting a report.

Point 10. Your first even remotely valid point. But Jack Straw will need to do an awful lot more than just make claims. His PM's constituency is even more irate about the flimsyness of the case than W's is. He's very high level official to stick his neck out, but if concidering the only publicly vetted piece of intel on this whole issue turns out to be a really, really, really bad forgery, I think I'll want more than just his word.

point 11: "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" If the evidence is solid, show it.

"acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." Based on that statement, we should probably pre-empt the entire non nuclear world.